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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Support Through an Infidelity Message Board

I decided to see how much help I can get through an infidelity message board. Talk About Marriage seems like a great forum with a lot of support given to all sides of infidelity. This is what I wrote in my post:

This community has such wonderful support for all people involved with infidelity that I wanted to jump in and ask for some help.

Because of my husband's infidelity, I am now dealing with every symptom of post traumatic stress disorder. I am almost four months out of D-Day and we are working on our marriage. However, my emotions and thoughts are so out of control that I don't know which way is up or down sometimes. One minute I don't want to be in this marriage (with someone who did the unthinkable) and the next minute I love him and am so glad I didn't leave him. This can happen multiple times a day. I feel insane sometimes!

When I say that I have all the symptoms of PTSD, I mean I also see things, which I call visions. I will see her walking with him, hugging on him and even have sex with him. It's so crazy.

I've started getting physically sick over it all and my feelings have started to feel raw again without anything new happening. It's like I just keep reliving it and becoming beaten down with it repeatedly. When I first found out, I talked to my counselor about how I feel like I am only able to experience a little of what happened because my body would shut down and refuse to face anymore of it. Well, now it seems as though I have an internal war of wanting to deal with it but at the same time trying to push it down.

I have a lot of rage, and a lot of sadness, I have nightmares and can't concentrate on things unrelated to the affair at times. I have so many triggers, it's ridiculous (thanks to the thousands of emails I found between them).

My counselor I have had since D-Day hasn't been much help in this area, she has been mostly a sound board. I am supposed to see a new one on the 9th...but I fear she will be just as effective.

I feel like I am drowning....

I'll write about some responses and my reactions to them as I get them. If you need help with infidelity, check them out!

5 comments:

you seem like a very strong woman to stay and work it out. i don't want to say too much because i was not a bs, but the ow with a mm. it created a huge mess for all of our lives. i read in your story that you took your children to the hotel... so they know what their father did? do you mind me asking how old are they and how they are handling it? i wish you well in your recovery...

I don't mind you asking at all. :-) Yes, we were in the process of moving 14 hours from family and friends and I had no choice when it came to bringing my kids with me to find out the truth. I was actually bringing them with me to meet my husband after staying with his grandmother while we waited to close on our house. However, I was confronted with something much different. My daughter is 4 and my son is 2. My son of course has no idea but my daughter knows that "daddy made a mistake". She is a very strong young lady....I have watched her for signs that she needs counseling but once we all settled into the house (that he ended up purchasing in his name) and have been able to cut way down on our arguments she is doing well. I think seeing us together has really made her recover from the trauma we put her through....

I wish you well in your recovery and hope you are able to work past the painful PTSD symptoms soon. My DH had the same things happen to him. One technique he said really worked for him was to either actually say the words "STOP IT" out loud, or to at least say them to himself in his head. Then he would replace the bad/intrusive vision with a positive memory of us together. Some of the positive memories/thoughts that were most powerful for him happened during our post-affair discovery period. We are now 3 years past the discovery and better than ever. You can do it, hang in there and you can heal together.http:/affairhealing.blogspot.com

Your words are great comfort to me. I am consciously trying to do the things you have mentioned but the replacing positive memories of me and my husband aren't really helping too much at this point in my recovery. I have a problem with falling back on the good in marriage because it seems all so fake now...knowing what's true and false now is so difficult. However, blocking the thoughts and just staying busy with other things seems to work...sometimes. Other times, I lose myself in them...unfortunately.